President Barack Obama gestures during his joint news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Wednesday, in Stockholm, Sweden. Several of the questions dealt with Syria. ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO

Barack Obama, whose criticism of George W. Bush's foreign policy hinged on the notion that Bush was insufficiently cautious when committing American forces overseas, seems to be doing his predecessor one better: getting into a war by sheer carelessness.

It was more than a decade ago, when Obama was an Illinois state senator, that he famously remarked (in the context of a then-potential war with Iraq): “I don't oppose all wars … What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war.” What would that young political star have made, one wonders, of a war initiated by a president's verbal promiscuity?

The entire impetus for American intervention in Syria owes to Obama's now-infamous response to a question at an August 2012 press conference, when he said that the use of chemical weapons by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would represent the crossing of a “red line” that would “change my calculus.”

There is nothing inherently objectionable about such a threat. The heart of deterrence is making it understood that hostile regimes will face consequences for their actions. Taken on those terms, the statement can only be criticized for its lack of precision. The vague notion of “changing the calculus” might be ominous coming from a more cold-blooded president (imagine how it would have sounded emanating from Richard Nixon). With Obama, however, it sounded like a lawyerly escape hatch.

The problem arises, however, when such threats are divorced from the will to effectuate them. A May report by the New York Times indicated that Obama improvised the “red line” language on the spot – much to horror of administration staff, who had set out to avoid any firm commitments to action in Syria. He's been living with the consequences ever since.

When reports of chemical weapons being used first emerged earlier this year, Obama felt compelled to offer assistance to Syrian rebels in the form of small arms – though it was clear that such supplies wouldn't do much to change the balance of power and though the weapons never seem to have arrived in any substantial quantity. At the time, White House officials brushed off criticism that the president's response was half-hearted, noting that the “red line” pledge really referred only to chemical attacks generating mass casualties. After the recent attack in a Damascus suburb (which Secretary of State John Kerry claims was responsible for over 1,400 deaths), the White House is out of rationalizations.

Conventional wisdom now holds that inaction is no longer an option for Obama, as it would diminish American credibility and indelibly paint him as weak on foreign affairs. The range of responses that the president is considering, however, seems unlikely to change that perception.

All indications are that any American military action in Syria will likely be limited to missile strikes intended to take out a token amount of the Assad regime's hardware. The more time that passes prior to any attack, the more likely those resources will be moved out of harm's way. Even if the strikes were to be unmitigated successes, however, it's unclear what benefit we'd expect to gain. By setting a ceiling on the level of aggression that the U.S. is willing to employ, Obama has only telegraphed to Assad the precise level of pain he'll have to withstand in order to maintain the status quo.

As a general principle, the United States should only engage in war when the nation's tangible security interests are clearly threatened and when we're prepared to use whatever level of force is required to protect those interests. Neither criterion applies in Syria.

Given his longstanding reticence on the matter, it is likely that Barack Obama understands this at some level – yet all of that reserve was invalidated by the “red line” pledge. Now he is bound to a conflict he lacks the will to fight, with a strategy that is incapable of succeeding – all because of one moment of spontaneous bravado behind the presidential podium. With a little more self-discipline and a little less vainglory, this all could have been avoided. How's that for a “dumb war”?

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